Drama in the Liberal ranks in preparation for a by-election in Trinity Spadina, as the nomination front-runner was apparently refused a green light from the Ontario Campaign Co-Chair because Christine Innes and her husband, former MP and junior minister Tony Ianno were accused of intimidating and bullying volunteers. Apparently they were telling these volunteers that their futures in the party would be over if they were on the “wrong side” of a nomination battle, meaning the future riding redistribution and their support for Chrystia Freeland. Innes put out a statement alleging backroom strong-arm tactics and that she refused to be “assigned” a riding to run in, which went against the promise of open nominations. The party responded that it was a request to keep candidates focused on the by-election, and not future nomination battles against incumbent MPs, which sounds like what the intimidation was about. As the battle waged over Twitter, the partisan concern trolling from all sides got cute, but the accusations of sexism because she was denied the green light over the actions of her husband do seem a bit over the top.

Conservative MPs have been rushing to lock in nominations for their incumbents, 18 months before the next election and in some cases, by acclamation. It does make one wonder why the heightened sense of urgency, unless it’s to curtail the potential challenges to some incumbents. It was noted in those documents that got leaked to the Star that they wanted to speed along some of those nominations. It’s also curious that this seems to be the answer to the “open nominations” that were promised.

It looks like a number of NDP MPs, as well as Conservatives, have donated to the separatist parties in Quebec. Justin Trudeau took to the Twitter Machine yesterday afternoon to tweet out his support for the provincial Liberal party (which really aren’t the same as the federal party) because they are the only federalist option. Apparently a failed Liberal candidate also donated, for the record.

Back from his trip to the UK and Germany to look at their vocational training systems, Jason Kenney noted that we couldn’t just import the German model here, but said the UK model is more realistic in terms of what we could adapt to our own system. He also defended his comments on income splitting saying that two-parent-single-income families shouldn’t be “punished” by the tax code for their choices. Um, okay.

The Canadian Forces are going to have to pay for any military commemorations that the government is planning in the lead-up to the Canada 150 celebrations, out of their own departmental budgets no less. You know, because they don’t have any other priorities or anything. But don’t worry, says the minister’s spokesperson – their budget is still bigger than when the Liberals are in charge. So suck it up, apparently?

John Baird announced that Canada will be contributing $220 million to the international bail-out package for Ukraine, in order to help the country regain its economic stability.

FINTRAC – the country’s anti-money laundering agency – says that there’s no problem with them collecting the personal information of Canadians, never mind the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner about that collection.

The Conservatives have been launching ads against Justin Trudeau on TV, but haven’t been posting them online anywhere, which is a change in tactics from what we’re used to seeing.

Elections Canada said that they cancelled those 2008 ads that the Conservatives objected to, and that they never aired. Pierre Poilievre asserts that they’re still on YouTube, which seems to be proof enough for him.

Seeing as he’s not running again, MP Laurie Hawn bemoans the decline in civility in the Commons. “That’s ridiculous,” Laurie Hawn thundered from his desk in the House. “Preposterous!” Hawn dismissed, as he did with any criticism of the F-35 fighter jets. (In other words, he wasn’t exactly saintly when it comes to civility).

Looking into Vic Toews’ history of having been taken to Federal Court while he was Public Safety minister finds that at least 11 times his decisions were overturned and found to be unreasonable and inconsistent with the facts. So his new career on the Court of Queen’s Bench is already off to an interesting start.

The former Chief Economic Analyst for Statistics Canada explodes the myth that a weaker dollar will really help our manufacturing sector, saying instead that what few gains would be made there would mostly be in the resources sector (which doesn’t need help) and not manufacturing, and that a low dollar will end up hurting the economy overall.

Our awful winter this year could be an indication of how unprepared we are for more extreme weather, as climate change becomes a reality, especially with the damage to aging infrastructure.

Given his business ties to Pierre-Karl Péladeau, it sounds like Brian Mulroney will likely be on the sidelines of the Quebec election, though he is apparently “disappointed” in PKP’s decision to run.

Michael Den Tandt looks back on the mission in Afghanistan and wonders if it was time to leave, if it really was a just mission and that we could be proud of our accomplishments.

In Washington DC, American Senators were told that approving the Keystone XL pipeline would be a “weapon” against the likes of Putin. I’m not sure that’s a real argument, but based on what economist Andrew Leach was tweeting out about that hearing, both sides were giving false rhetoric to support their positions.

And Greenland’s largest telecom company is trying to sue Fisheries and Oceans Canada to reveal which ship damaged one of its undersea cables.